Earth Sciences

The OneGeology Project
Brooks Rowlett points to this BBC News article about the OneGeology project, an initiative to make accessible online geological map data from the entire planet. This sounded familiar, like I’d heard about it before, but apparently I never got around… »
Posted on Friday, August 1, 2008 at 2:54 PM
Categories: Earth Sciences
European Digital Archive of Soil Maps
The European Digital Archive of Soil Maps collects old soil maps from countries around the world, with a view to preserving them for later conversion into digital format. The archive is absolutely huge: it covers every inhabited continent. Special… »
Posted on Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 7:35 PM
Categories: Earth Sciences
Working Cartographers
From the Times’s career section, an article featuring two people working in the cartography field: Jon Ford, a survey geologist with the British Geological Survey, and Edward Mainwaring, a cartographer with the Ordnance Survey…. »
Posted on Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 5:53 AM
Categories: Earth Sciences, Industry News, Surveying
Mapping the Human Impact on Marine Ecosystems
A map of the human impact on global marine ecosystems has been published in today’s issue of Science; it reveals that only four percent of the world’s oceans have not been affected by human activity. Matt Perry was part… »
Posted on Friday, February 15, 2008 at 9:29 PM
Categories: Earth Sciences, Environment
Boston-Area Map Exhibitions
At the Boston Public Library’s Copley Square through June, Boston and Beyond, a collection of bird’s-eye-view maps of Boston and New England from the second half of the 19th century. At Harvard University’s Pusey Library until April 1, Henry F…. »
Posted on Saturday, January 26, 2008 at 4:14 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Boston, Earth Sciences, Exhibitions, Globes, Surveying
A Geologic Map in Every School
The West Texas Geological Society is running a project to put a large geologic map of the United States into every elementary school in Midland and Odessa, Texas — a project apparently based on another in Corpus Christi. Via All… »
Posted on Saturday, January 26, 2008 at 7:49 AM
Categories: Earth Sciences, Education
Geologic Map of Montana
The Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology has released a new Geologic Map of Montana, the first since 1955. The four-foot-by-seven-foot map costs $60 in plain paper and $85 in glossy paper. More from the Billings Gazette…. »
Posted on Sunday, November 4, 2007 at 1:53 PM
Categories: Earth Sciences
World Magnetic Anomaly Map
The BBC reports on the recently released World Digital Magnetic Anomaly Map, which measures the slight variations in the Earth’s magnetic field. The map, available through the Commission for the Geological Map of the World, is a compilation from… »
Posted on Sunday, November 4, 2007 at 11:33 AM
Categories: Earth Sciences
Subglacial Lakes and Rivers in Antarctica
A recent National Science Foundation report discusses what should be done to explore and preserve a system of lakes and rivers beneath the Antarctic ice cap; of interest to us is this map of that system. Ice-penetrating radar and… »
Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 at 5:38 PM
Categories: Earth Sciences
Matt Fox’s Topographic Map Archive as Google Earth Layer
Matt Fox, who georectified the Great Salt Lake bathymetric maps for use as Google Earth overlays, has made available his entire collection of maps through a Google Earth network link. The collection includes topo maps of the western U.S.,… »
Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 11:09 AM
Categories: Earth Sciences, Georeferencing, Google Earth, Topo Maps & Trails
Portland LIDAR Survey
A $1-million project to map the terrain of Portland, Oregon will take place over the next few weeks, the Oregonian reports. The aerial LIDAR survey is intended to create a hyper-accurate terrain map that will be particularly useful in… »
Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 12:34 PM
Categories: Earth Sciences, Portland, Satellite & Aerial, Surveying
Guettard’s Mineralogical Atlas
BibliOdyssey’s latest map-related find is Jean-Étienne Guettard’s Atlas et description minéralogiques de la France (1780), digitized and available online at the University of Strasbourg, where, peacay notes, “maps start on page 223 … the full maps at the site… »
Posted on Monday, January 22, 2007 at 3:03 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Earth Sciences
Marie Tharp and Plate Tectonics
The New York Times Magazine’s year-end retrospective on deaths of notable people in 2006 includes a profile of Marie Tharp, the oceanographic cartographer who died earlier this year (see previous entry). David Tiley places her career struggles in context:… »
Posted on Tuesday, January 2, 2007 at 7:41 AM
Categories: Cartography, Earth Sciences, Obituaries
Paleogeography and Google Earth
Missed this earlier. Google Earth’s time animation feature is now part of the free version, and Google Earth user Valery Hronusov has taken global paleogeographic data put out by geology professor Ron Blakey — whom we last met thanks… »
Posted on Wednesday, November 1, 2006 at 8:48 AM
Categories: Earth Sciences, Google Earth
Bedrock Geologic Map of Ohio
The Ohio Geological Survey has announced a 1:500,000-scale map of the state’s bedrock geology: “The map shows the distribution of 46 bedrock formations or combinations of formations occurring at the surface or immediately beneath the surficial deposits (mostly glacial)… »
Posted on Friday, September 29, 2006 at 10:48 AM
Categories: Earth Sciences
Hudson Canyon Mapped
A four-year study of Hudson Canyon, a feature of the continental shelf off the coast of New York, “has produced maps that will allow scientists to study many things, including whether methane gas trapped in frozen sediment below the… »
Posted on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 at 1:18 PM
Categories: Earth Sciences
Marie Tharp
Columbia University reports the death yesterday of Marie Tharp, an oceanographic cartographer who worked on the first world map of the ocean floor; she also co-discovered the Mid-Atlantic Ridge’s rift valley. She was 86. A pioneer of modern oceanography,… »
Posted on Thursday, August 24, 2006 at 6:19 PM
Categories: Cartography, Earth Sciences, Obituaries
Fire!
BLDGBLOG’s been having fun with images from NASA’s Earth Observatory again (see previous entry), linking to this collection of MODIS images of Africa during 2005, showing the occurrence of fires deliberately set by people as part of their agricultural… »
Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 at 8:14 PM
Categories: Earth Sciences, Energy & Resources, Environment, Satellite & Aerial
SF Bay Area Geology
The USGS’s San Francisco Bay Region Geology and Geologic Hazards page has a lot going for it, mapwise. No surprise that much of it has to do with earthquake risks. There are three main sections: geologic maps compiled from several… »
Posted on Monday, April 24, 2006 at 1:07 PM
Categories: Earth Sciences
The Paleogeography of North America
Via Cartography, a stunning collection of maps depicting the paleogeography of North America. The images presented here show the paleogeography of North America over the last 550 million years of geologic history. The 40 images shown here are selected from… »
Posted on Wednesday, April 12, 2006 at 9:45 AM
Categories: Earth Sciences

Note: Entries from 2003 were not categorized and will not appear in the category archives. Please consult the monthly archives.